


Connect

by nuomyi



Category: Haikyuu!!, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: AU with slight canon compliant elements if you squint, Gen, M/M, Yaku Lev and both Yamamotos are there in passing, alternatively the worst crossover possible inspired by the recent chapters, mafia AU kuroken but literally not what you're going to expect, primary a HQ fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25287640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuomyi/pseuds/nuomyi
Summary: The day before their game against Karasuno in the spring interhigh, Kuroo’s dad tells him that he’s retiring and that he’ll be inheriting the family business in a week....Kuroo goes into the game in the same way his dad once welcomed the Kozume family to their neighbourhood with the warm smile of someone who didn’t just murder a man in the living room moments earlier.
Relationships: Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	Connect

**Author's Note:**

> I was crying over haikyuu and rereading Metisket's post-canon KHR fics and this happened. Don't ask. I have nothing to say for myself. :D

The day before their game against Karasuno in the spring interhigh, Kuroo’s dad tells him that he’s retiring and that he’ll be inheriting the family business in a week.

Family business, Dad says, as if they’re a legitimate company and not some bloodstained yakuza syndicate with their cute little bakery as a barely-disguised front for their activities. Yakuza...or are they mafia now, technically? The terms seem to blur together into a horrifying synonym these days, now that the Italian mafia has long since dug its roots deep into Japanese soil. Last he hears, the Vongola boss has been trying to reform (or dismantle?) the mafia from the inside out, pulling out those roots like they aren’t embedded deep in hundreds of years of bloodstained history. As if Sawada Tsunayoshi can stop bearing the sins of his predecessors by destroying what they built. Maybe he can, because damaging the taproot can kill even the strongest tree. But it’s not any of Kuroo’s business, not by a long shot.

His business is the sport that he’s dedicated over half his life to, the ball that keeps him grounded as it soars over the net, and the teammates that keep him halfway sane. It makes him feel like a normal high school senior. A normal person, with a normal hobby. So in the same way his dad once welcomed the Kozume family to their neighbourhood with the warm smile of someone who didn’t just murder a man in the living room moments earlier, Kuroo Tetsurou goes into the game with so many well-crafted layers of facades that even Kenma won’t be able to tell what’s wrong with him.

(Kenma does get through the first three layers, decides that Kuroo must have an upset stomach, and gives him a Yakult.)

When the game ends, he’s one step closer to that dreaded inheritance ceremony, and it makes losing taste even more bitter.

“Thanks for getting me into volleyball, Kuroo,” Kenma says earnestly, and Kuroo wonders if it’s not too out of character to cry. But a captain doesn’t cry. A mafia boss sure as hell doesn’t cry.

Volleyball sure is fun, and he wonders if he can live a double agent life as a pro athlete and a mafia boss, and maybe even a college student all at once. He’ll miss Nekoma. He’ll miss his friends. He wonders briefly if Kenma will join him in a life of crime if he asks.

He doesn’t really want to ask.

* * *

“Sure, that’ll be fun,” Kenma says, a university freshman with nothing better to do than to casually join the mafia at a friend’s drunken request.

Kuroo... _really_ shouldn’t be drinking if he lets his guard down like this after a shot of scalding soju that burns his tongue and sets his throat on fire. They are in Kenma’s dorm, and he blabbers half his family’s secrets to his best friend without much prompting. Foolish. A loose tongue is what gets you killed in the mafia, he knows this. He’s not suited to be a mafia boss. He shouldn’t be drinking but life is overwhelming, and the best way to cope is to drown himself in legal, mind-altering substances.

Kenma, he discovers, can drink like a fish, and any hopes of getting him blackout drunk to erase Kuroo’s blunder from his memories are dashed. Kuroo tips another shot of soju down his throat, and he wakes up the next day feeling like a sack of garbage.

And now that he’s sober and horribly hungover, Kenma patiently repeats to him that yes, he’s known all along he’s been involved in something criminal although he wasn’t quite sure if it was illegal trafficking or money laundering or something worse. Kuroo is dismayed. Kenma’s impressed.

“A mafia boss,” he says, and he sounds so awed it makes Kuroo feel even guiltier. “You’re _living_ the video game life. I want in. Is it dangerous?”

“Well _yeah_ , it’s dangerous!” Kuroo all but snaps at him, but he bites back harsher words because he knows he’s not being fair. “Actually, the other families in Japan, we’ve been trying –” emphasis on the trying, because it’ll be another hundred years before they can wipe their hands completely clean of blood “– to change the old ways. Transitioning from _really_ illegal, like behind bars for the rest of your life illegal to...something a bit more like a slightly shady business. You following?”

“So you’re just a businessman.” Why does Kenma sound so disappointed? And why is he sad about that?

“A businessman,” he agrees halfheartedly, “with hands stained red.”

“A conman?” Kenma suggests.

He is, kind of. In the end if they’re going to avoid all the _behind bars for the rest of your life illegal_ , as he said to Sawada once, they’re going to have to turn to scamming and fraud to fund their expenses. Or get a real job, but apparently that’s out of the question in mafia land.

* * *

But, Kuroo discovers, there are ways to make money outside of a real job that aren’t necessarily borderline illegal.

“You’re trading _what_ ?” he asks Kenma again, wondering if that’s just some obscure mafia slang he’s never heard of because Kenma goes _deep_ when he’s invested in something and he’s probably way more knowledgeable about crime syndicates than Kuroo is now.

“Stocks,” he replies. He sounds smug, the way he gets when he absolutely obliterates the enemy in PvP games.

Kuroo is the one with the (in-progress) business degree. Sure, he does miss class from time to time now that he’s the head of a mafia family, but he’s pretty certain you can’t afford the down payment for a fancy new house by trading _stocks_ . Not if you literally started last week. You need to have money to make money. He’s pretty sure Kenma is – _was_ , now that he’s loaded, apparently – as poor as he is.

“I also record let’s plays on youtube,” Kenma adds, a little reluctantly. Ah. So that’s how he funds his stock trading endeavours. He’s also insanely lucky and insanely smart. Maybe Kuroo will start doing that too, and he can quit this mafia business for good.

“You can’t do that, Tetsu,” Kenma tells him, and his voice is annoyingly sympathetic. “You suck at most video games.”

“I’m gonna go tell Vongola Decimo that the future of the mafia lies with youtube ad revenue,” Kuroo says, and he’s only half-joking because Sawada really has been fretting over money running dry for years now that they don’t do hits on civilians anymore. Still can’t wash out the blood completely, because what kind of a hitman doesn’t do hits altogether? Kenma, apparently. Getting rich just by sitting in front of his computer. God, why can’t all these mafia bosses just do youtube?

"Actually," Kenma says pensively, "most of the money is from stocks."

* * *

Times are changing, and Kuroo is glad Kenma never has to wade any deeper than up to his ankles into mafia business because they’re in Japan and not Italy, and Sawada – the most high-profile boss in this country – is a reasonable person. It feels less like mafia, and more like a bunch of kids playing mafia.

And they are all just a bunch of kids. Kuroo is twenty-two and the Vongola boss is just shy of twenty-one. One of Sawada’s men is still just a little brat that hasn’t even graduated high school. But meetings with them feel less like a loaded gun and Russian Roulette from what he remembers of shadowing his dad, and more like volleyball strategy meetings with Nekoma back in the day. The Vongola bicker like old friends, and Kuroo misses Yaku and the others desperately.

“Why don’t you ask Yaku to join the mafia?” Kenma asks him matter-of-factly, when he mentions that once in passing but worded a little less like he’s throwing a tantrum.

“Yeah, I should _totally_ just ask Yaku to abandon his athletic scholarship just to join us in a life of crime –”

“But why not?” Kenma persists. “Aren’t you actively trying to improve the system so we can transition into a legitimate business?"

That's Sawada Tsunayoshi’'s idea, and not his. Although it's not like he's perfectly content to be like his dad, a cold-blooded killer from a line of cold-blooded killers. Backed by dirty money. No way out of this but to die facedown in a ditch.

But the Vongola's pipe dream offers him a chance to change things. It's a double-edged sword.

* * *

At the next meeting, Sawada reminds Kuroo that his life is in near-constant peril just by existing, and so his friends are at a near-constant risk of danger by association. And it doesn’t matter that he hasn’t seen any of them since high school graduation, because the mafia will dig up what they want to dig up. 

“What do you want?” Kuroo asks Sawada flatly, a thinly veiled threat that doesn’t seem to faze him at all. Kuroo can recognize masterful negotiation tactics when he sees it, but he can’t tell what he other boss wants.

For Kuroo to induct all of his friends into the mafia? As if that will keep them safe.

"That's right," Sawada tells him gravely, and he's almost like Kenma when he gets like this, furrowed brows and concentrated gaze. "Keep your friends close, teach them how to protect themselves, and they'll be ok."

Kuroo nearly chokes.

“Your friend Lev’s from a mafia family anyway,” he continues, “so it’s only a matter of time they get dragged into your fight. Oh, did you not know?”

Kuroo doesn’t. It shows on his face, treacherously. That might be what’ll get him killed in the mafia someday, if he doesn’t drink himself to death first.

“I don’t want them to be a part of _this_ ,” Kuroo says, waving his hand around the Vongola’s office in a way that’ll surely offend a less resilient man.

But Sawada just looks at him pityingly. “I thought that too, once. And look where that got me.”

That’s alarmingly ominous.

Kuroo says he’ll think about it. And he does. Agonizing over something he’s thought about all the time because his dad’s men are retiring soon and he’s not about to send _Kenma_ on the front lines when he’s their heart and their brain and his irreplaceable friend. In that order.

Yaku can kill a man. Probably. Lev’s apparently already mafia. That should mean he’s already loyal to another family, but Sawada won’t have told him anything if Lev’s unattainable. With hitman blood and no ties, he’ll be useful to get on their side. Kai will follow him unquestioningly. He’ll make a good secretary. 

Kuroo feels sick to his stomach.

* * *

“I want to play volleyball,” Kuroo announces one day to no one in particular at a meeting with the Vongola. It’s summer break and no one’s found an internship yet and Yamamoto’s been pestering the Nekoma group chat to hang out for once and Kuroo has made up his mind.

Sawada mumbles something about nearly failing P.E. but _his_ Yamamoto is grinning because he totally gets it and Kuroo gives him a high five.

It’s a clumsy game of volleyball because he and Kenma haven’t played for over two years, and the Vongola are as unathletic as they can get. Their Yamamoto has to explain the rules a couple of times, smiling murderously. 

It’s their first and last game of volleyball like this, because Kuroo officially invites the others into his allegedly not-so-secret mafia life right after the game and they’re no longer just Nekoma alumni but _family_. Lev’s thrilled, because of course he is. They’re all mostly unsurprised, because apparently Kuroo’s always looked like a criminal to them. That stings a little.

But over time, Kuroo's business (?) gives opportunities rather than takes lives, and he wonders how they managed to transition so smoothly from _mafia_ to _capitalism_. Backed by Kenma’s money. Maybe he won’t end up dead and facedown in a ditch after all.


End file.
